Denison business shares Christmas train display with Texoma

DENISON, TEXAS -- For the past couple years, a local business has devoted nearly a fourth of its store to spreading the Christmas spirit.

They unload about 60 boxes of trains and models to create a quintessential miniature Christmas town that they put on display for Texomans.

It's taken Steve Wampler twenty years to build this not-so-mini Christmas town.

His love for trains led him to purchase this model train station; a purchase that multiplied into a collection for all of Texoma to see.

"Well most of them just can't believe how many different things are on it," Wampler said.

Steve says this nostalgic Christmas town takes him back to simpler days when he went to drive-in movies and ate at the local diner.

"It makes the Christmas season special for a lot of people. It doesn't matter what age they are, little tiny children all the way up to the oldest person that comes in, they're just, they're amazed by it," David Wilburn with Gray's Jeweler's said.

The display started out on a ping pong table at a local church. Now, it takes up nearly a quarter of Gray's Jeweler's in Denison.

David says it puts everyone who stops by in the Christmas spirit.

"We keep trying to add something new and different each and every year, so, it's fun," Wilburn said.

In fact, if this town were a real town, it'd only be missing a school, police department and hospital.

For both Steve and David, this just takes them back to glory days.

"Every little kid always wants a train set when they're young, I think, and that appeals to the child in us. And then all the older people look back and the drive-in movie theater and the garage, all the stuff you don't see anymore, and they can think back to their younger days and stuff like that," Wilburn said.

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